In Primo, Sir Antony Sher's adaptation of Primo Levi's memoir If This Is a Man, the South African-born actor does some astounding one-man-play work. The piece deals with two fathomlessly compelling issues. First, it concerns the Jewish chemist's appalling, year-long incarceration at Auschwitz. ("Hell must be like this," Levi recalls thinking.) Only slightly less apparently, Primo is also about how to present aspects of the Holocaust in a theatrical entry. (Levi himself didn't like the word "Holocaust" as a description of this major 20th-century event, but it's the most familiar one we have and is therefore employed here.)

In the script's introduction, Sher writes, "I don't believe it's pos[...]